As Father Waits, Court Order Freezes Elian Standoff

Juan Miguel Gonzalez had a very bad day Thursday. First, he had to sit
through a home video released by his Miami relatives and put in heavy
rotation by the news networks in which his six-year-old son wagged a finger
at his father and said he didn't want to go home to Cuba; then the 11th
Circuit Court of Appeals concurred. The court issued an injunction ordering
that Elian should remain in the United States pending the outcome of an
appeal by his relatives for custody, and the Justice Department indicated it
would hold off on efforts to reunite the boy with his father pending the
outcome of the latest court battle, which the government expects will take at
least three or four days. Although the Miami relatives lost a battle to bring
the matter to a state court Thursday, the setback was overshadowed by their
victory in the Atlanta appeals court, which once again moves the struggle
over Elian's fate off the streets of Miami and into a courtroom.

That's got to have left Elian's father a very unhappy man, inasmuch as he came to
the U.S. in the belief that he'd be quickly reunited with his son, with whom
he'd wait out the appeals process. Thursday's ruling suggests Juan Miguel
Gonzalez may now be required to wait out the appeals process without his
child. "He was encouraged to believe that by coming here he'd prevail in the
end," says TIME Justice Department correspondent Elaine Shannon. "But things
aren't done here the way they're done in a dictatorship, and there may yet be
a lot of litigation before the boy is reunited with his father. Plainly, the
Cuban exile leadership are going to do everything in their power to avoid
giving him up."

Lazaro Gonzalez had earlier defied a government order to hand the boy over at
2 p.m., declaring that "they will have to take this child from me by force."
That marked an apparent shift from earlier in the week, when the standoff
appeared set for an imminent end. The leading exile group, the Cuban American
National Foundation, appeared Tuesday to have brokered a face-saving deal in
which Elian would be reunited with his father at a meeting with Lazaro
Gonzalez, but that deal was quickly abandoned later the same day. "Earlier
this week it looked as though the foundation might be trying to cut its p.r.
losses by moving to have Lazaro and Elian's father Juan Miguel at least meet
in Washington before handing over the boy," says TIME Miami bureau chief Tim
Padgett. "But that quickly fell through when the foundation realized that it
would suffer an even worse p.r. disaster in its own constituency if it was seen
to be handing the boy over." As confrontation appeared to loom, with
thousands massed outside the Miami home of Lazaro Gonzalez in the hope of
preventing the government from enforcing its order, all sides were given a
reprieve by the latest court order. Still, unless the appeals court reverses
the trend of judicial decision in the case thus far, that reprieve may only
be temporary.